"LAB" 2003 Obituary

LABAS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-27 published
Self-inflicted wound kills man who shot housemate
A man who police say shot a woman he was living with and then
turned the gun on himself died in hospital yesterday.
Pauline MATTIS, 50, was shot in the face on Tuesday at the business
she and Frank
PERREIRA owned. She remains in hospital.
Mr. PERREIRA was found shot in the head with a handgun beside
him.
CFTO news reported last night that Mr.
PERREIRA was living with
four women at the same time.
"He wasn't coming home. He never spent 24 hours with me. He always
had big plans, big lies. He's on the road... this business trip
or that business trip," said Carol
LABAS.
She said she met Mr.
PERREIRA on an Internet dating service and
that he owed her $87,000.
John LANCASTER,
CFTONews
Page A12

LABATT o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-21 published
A character in life and work
Toronto-born actor played supporting roles in hundreds of films
and television shows, including the cult-hit sitcom Mary Hartman
By Bill GLADSTONESpecial to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, May
21, 2003 - Page R5
As a genial, six-foot, balding performer who wore a trademark
mustache and glasses, Graham
JARVIS was not the leading-man type.
The Toronto-born actor from a privileged background, who died
last month in California at 72, courted but never achieved stardom
and instead gained a kind of small-roles fame by appearing in
hundreds of supporting parts in film and television productions.
Mr. JARVIS took character parts in films as diverse as Alice's
Restaurant, Cold Turkey, Middle Age Crazy, Silkwood and Misery,
and a similar assortment of television shows including Star Trek,
ER, Murder She Wrote, Gunsmoke, The X-Files and Six Feet Under.
His first role was as an understudy in a mid-1950s Broadway production
of Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending, and his last was
as the grandfather in an episode of the television series Seventh
Heaven, which aired four days after his death in April.
He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Charlie Haggers,
the devoted husband of a country singer in the 1970s television
sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. "Nobody outside the business
knows my name, but it doesn't bother me," he told an interviewer
in 1982. "Fans still know me as Charlie, years after we went
off the air. Fans went nuts over that character for some reason
and I love the guy myself."
A scion of the historic Toronto family for whom
JARVISStreet
is named, Graham Powely
JARVIS was also the grand_son of John
LABATTJr., who built up the famous Labatt brewery. A strain
of theatrical talent obviously runs in the Labatt blood: His
cousins include two legendary theatre personalities -- nonagenarian
actor Hume
CRONYN and Broadway producer Robert
WHITEHEAD, who
died last year.
It was Mr.
WHITEHEAD who helped Mr.
JARVIS attain the gig in
Orpheus Descending and an audition at the Barter Theatre in Abbingdon,
Va., where he trained for three seasons. Mr.
CRONYN also helped
him land a Broadway role, Mr.
JARVIS said in 1982, adding that
he rarely liked to mention the celebrated theatrical connections
within his own family.
"This is the first time I've let this information out because
I've tried not to trade on it," he said. "But I guess I've been
around long enough now not to worry about it."
His father, an investment banker who was instrumental in founding
what is today known as Scotia McLeod and was later president
of Labatt, moved the family to New York when Graham was 5. He
was sent to Bishop Ridley College, a prep school in St. Catharines,
Ontario, and later to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
A confused dropout at 23, he found work on the midnight shift
in a penny arcade on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Then a friend
invited him to watch an off-Broadway troupe in rehearsal and
a light went on in his head. "I can do that!" he told himself,
and he never looked back.
"Graham was such a great character actor because he could just
go into character," said his niece, Sandra
JARVIS of Toronto.
"He was just brilliant that way. You'd be having a conversation
with him and he'd just don a role, and it would take you a second
to realize that Graham was now acting. Anyone who knew him well
could just see this glow in his eyes -- this glint that told
you he knew he was having fun with you."
"He loved acting," said his friend, actor Wil
ALBERT. "
When
he was acting he was like a little boy going to the candy store."
Mr. JARVIS was a graduate of the American Theatre Wing acting
school as well as of the Barter Theatre. He was an original member
of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater and a veteran of many
Broadway and off-Broadway productions.
His first film role (in Bye Bye Braverman, 1968) enticed him
to move to Hollywood, and he soon landed the part of the narrator
in the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show at the Roxy
Theatre on Sunset Boulevard.
Television producer Norman
LEAR spotted him there and eventually
recommended him for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Mr.
JARVIS also
appeared in the show's sequel, Forever Fernwood. Another memorable
role was of John Erlichman in Blind Ambition, a well-received
1979 television miniseries about the Watergate political scandal.
Relishing the idea of free airfare to Toronto where he had family
and Friends, Mr.
JARVIS took occasional work from the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation. Former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
producer Ross
McLEAN once told of auditioning him as a talk-show
host, but felt his bald dome would need to be covered. Mr.
JARVIS
owned a hairpiece but had left it in California.
"Makeup pulled 20-odd rugs out of storage," Mr.
McLEAN wrote.
"Everything he tried on looked absurdly out of place." Ultimately,
Mr. JARVIS arranged for his L.A. agent to go to his house, find
the hairpiece and rush it to Toronto.
"The rug made it on time," Mr.
McLEAN noted, adding that "I
have rarely seen a less convincing thatch of regrouped Hong Kong
hair." In short, Graham
JARVIS looked best -- and did the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation audition -- as himself.
In a 1980s television series called Making the Grade, Mr.
JARVIS
played a buck-passing inner-city high-school principal who didn't
care that a student couldn't read. In real life, however, he
worked as a volunteer to teach literacy skills to young offenders.
"It was really fascinating to hear him talk about it," said
his wife, JoAnna. "He felt they couldn't read because they couldn't
speak -- they were speaking a street patois. He went back to
college to get his teaching certificate so he could do this on
a regular basis." Active in civic politics, he pushed for handgun
control and helped voters get to the polls on election day. He
also sang in his church choir and worked in its Sunday school.
"I think the consensus among almost everyone who knew Graham
is that he was a very warm, enjoyable man," said actor Jerry
HARDIN, a friend for almost 50 years.
"You came away feeling he was a good human being if you had any
contact with him. He was very empathetic. He had compassion for
people's difficulties and problems, and he would help them if
he could."
Friends and family also recall his storytelling skills and his
joy at giving visitors detailed historic tours of New York and
later Hollywood. By all accounts, he was a humble man.
"He didn't think he was nearly as successful as he was," said
Barbara WARREN, a niece. "He was always extremely surprised and
delighted when people would stop him on the street and ask him
for his autograph.
"He loved to deliver the lines and get the shock on your face,"
Ms. WARREN said. "You never saw him poise himself, he just
walked right in as if he was that person."
Mr. JARVIS died at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of
Los Angeles on April 16. Besides his wife, JoAnna, he leaves
sons Matthew and Alex in California and sister Kitty Blair in
Toronto.